The story goes, that, on this last named expedition, three traders were taken prisoners by the Indians, and held by them as hostages, until their prolonged absence exciting the anxiety of their comrades, an expedition was sent in quest of them, under the command of Cornelis Hendricksen, who, in a little yacht named the _Restless_, explored the whole of Delaware Bay, ascended one of the rivers flowing into it, and brought back his fellow-countrymen in triumph. On Hendricksen’s return to the parent settlement, he gave such glowing accounts of the capabilities of the new “havens, lands, and places” visited, that his employers――their original charter being then on the eve of expiration――determined if possible to obtain another, giving them more ample powers. Their petition was refused; but, in 1621, a far more important enterprise than theirs was sanctioned by the States-General of the Netherlands, who granted to the now famous West India Company a monopoly of all the lands known by the Dutch as New Netherland, and which included much of the territory to which the English had given the name of New England. The first emigrants to take advantage of the extensive privileges of the West India Company were a little band of Walloons, members of that much-persecuted and sturdy race, descended from the old Gallic Belgæ, whose brave struggle against the Germans in the old mountain fastnesses of the Ardennes had saved them from extermination. The same constitutional impulsiveness and perseverance, activity and skill, which kept the Walloons alive and prosperous throughout all subsequent changes in their native land, rendered them well fitted to fight their own battle in a new scene; and when the Dutch authorities heard of their expulsion from their homes on account of their religious opinions, they most wisely invited them to settle in New Netherland. The first city founded by the Dutch under the new charter――or, to be more strictly accurate, by the Walloons, under the West India Company――was the modern Albany, the capital of the present State of New York, which was at first called Fort Orange, and was the second town of importance built within the limits of the United States, Jamestown having been the first. The foundations were laid in 1623, and in less than a year it had become a flourishing settlement, while trading stations established at the same time on Manhattan Island, the Delaware, Connecticut, and other rivers, grew with equal rapidity. In course of time, difficulties with the Indians led to the temporary abandonment of Fort Orange, and the building on Manhattan Island, on a site purchased for twenty-four dollars, of Fort Amsterdam, round which clustered the town long known as New Amsterdam, and now under its English name of New York――it having been taken by the British in 1664――the chief city and most important seaport of America.